In 1978, French filmmaker Christian Lara signed “Coco la Fleur, Candidate”. It is the first feature-length fiction film produced in Guadeloupe, the West Indies and the Caribbean. The former journalist, who always wanted to be a director, has thus entered the history of the seventh art.
The Guadeloupean director Christian Lara, to whom we owe Coco la Fleur, candidate (1978), the first fiction feature film from the Antilles, died on Saturday September 9 at the age of 84 in Martinique, reports Guadeloupe la 1ère. Born in 1939, has Basse-Terre, he has directed around twenty films including Mamito (1979)Chap’la” (1979), Black (1988)Bitter Sugar (1998), 1802, the Guadeloupean epic (2003) or Yafa, forgiveness (2020).
“When a people has no images, it does not exist”, the filmmaker and producer often said. Since the end of the 1970s, he had worked to create “the cinema of (his) island“, more broadly this West Indian cinema. He defined it, in an interview given to the Cinémathèque française in 2011, as that carried by main West Indian performers, which ideally takes place in the region, where part of Creole is spoken and which is directed by a West Indian director.
After having cut his teeth in erotic cinema, he worked to allow his compatriots “to finally see ourselves on screen”. Christian Lara often recalled that Coco la Fleur, candidate, –the story of an illiterate storyteller but full of common sense thrown into the political arena during a legislative election, played by Robert Liensol, “the greatest West Indian actor” of the time –remained on display for a year in Paris.
Duty of memory
In order to “promote the black man” And “his dignity”as he confided in a television interview in 2014, he will describe “his reality”particularly in Guadeloupe and the West Indies, at the cinema following the advice given by Ingmar Bergman, the famous Swedish filmmaker: “Only film what you really know!” And like his grandfather Oruno Denis Lara, the first Guadeloupean historian, the former journalist of Figaro echoes in his cinematographic work the often painful history of his native land.
Particularly in 1802, the Guadeloupean epic (2003) which recounts the resistance put up by the Guadeloupeans, united behind Colonel Louis Delgrès played by the actor Luc Saint-Eloy (his favorite actor), with Napoleon Bonaparte who wishes to reaffirm the authority of France in its colonies of Saint-Domingue and Guadeloupe in revolt. Objective: to prevent at all costs that slavery, abolished eight years earlier, is not reestablished. There release of the film in French cinemas, May 10, 2006, coincides with the first commemoration of the National Day of Remembrance of the Traffic, Slavery and Their Abolition.
“Christian was a great defender of Guadeloupean cinema. He claimed it. He composed, over the years, a rich body of work. Films strongly anchored in Guadeloupean soil but Christian also took his camera to mainland France, made fantastic films like The Legend filmed in Polynesia and made films in Africa, Gabon and Cameroon”, reacted Luc Saint-Eloy when asked by Franceinfo Culture. The actor worked with Christian Lara “for over twenty-five years.”A long and beautiful friendship, he writes again. About ten films together, the last one was shot in Guadeloupe last May, The Man with the Stick, a Creole legend, his 26th since Coco la Fleur, candidate, the first commercially released West Indian feature film.”
A permanent inspiration for new generations
“With the death of Christian Lara, Guadeloupe loses a sacred monster of cinema, a precursor for Guadeloupean filmmakers and the entire world of West Indian cinema. In a 50-year career, he leaves a legacy of an exceptional and daring filmography established as a legend . He was keen to highlight the talent of our West Indian actors and the landscapes of our territory.”, underlines a press release from the Regional Council of Guadeloupe which also salutes its essential role among younger generations. Christian Lara, with Euzhan Palcy, “showed us that it was possible“, confides Guadeloupean filmmaker Franck Salin to Franceinfo Culture.
Christian Lara has been a source of inspiration for those attracted to cinema, particularly in the Caribbean. The seventh art, he believed, is both“a window and a mirror” which allows “better known”, among others, within a French nation where the Antilles are “citizens entirely apart” as Aimé Césaire, cantor of negritude and Martinican politician, said.
Celebrated for his entire career at the 21st edition of the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles, in 2013, Christian Lara spoke “loneliness” of the pioneer, a feeling which was a driving force for him. In five decades, the 14-year-old, who dreamed of becoming a director, helped to make “exist” Overseas cinema. At the time of his disappearance, the octogenarian was working on The man with the sticka well-known story in Guadeloupe that the director had undertaken to revisit.